


Gambling on Catching Up

by pyromaniacblujay



Category: 60 Parsecs!
Genre: Alcohol, Gambling, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25985485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyromaniacblujay/pseuds/pyromaniacblujay
Summary: After the Astro-Citizens' adventure, the crew parted ways to fulfill their own destinies. Emmet finds himself missing them all a lot, though, he misses April the most. It's expected when she's presumed dead.
Kudos: 6





	Gambling on Catching Up

A hulking orange figure slammed his cards against the table and yelled out a swear, causing the chatter in the bar to come almost to a halt. A few eyes wandered over to his table to watch the large alien nearly throwing his credits over to a tall, impossibly skinny person who most of the customers knew as one of the regulars, Emmet, and he had pulled his goggles over his eyes in an attempt to shield them from any stray credits that managed to fly into his face.

The alien stood up from the table and stormed out of the bar, throwing curses at Emmet as he left. The rest of the bar exchanged a few murmurs before returning to its usual chatter and laughter.

Emmet sat there for a few moments, then sighed before standing up and brushing off his cloak. He circled the table to retrieve the cards he used in his latest game and place them neatly into the small box he slipped out of his bag. A certain card caught his eye, a king of hearts, causing Emmet to stare at it with a frown before picking it up, smoothing it out the best he could, and sticking it into the box with the other cards. _The most you could do was set the cards on the table like a normal person._

He took another couple of minutes to sweep all of the credits on the table into his bag, along with picking up any that fell on the floor from his last opponent's outburst, then sat down on his stool in silence, just to think to himself.

_I need to find something else to do at some point._ He began to fiddle with the edges of his glove. _But what?_ Emmet had been pondering over that question for a couple days by now. The only reason why he ended up becoming a regular gambler (against his better judgement) at this intergalactic bar was because he didn't really have anyone to talk to, and he figured that maybe, just maybe, he could make some small conversation with people here, maybe even make a couple of new friends. Though, he wasn't ever able to establish a bond as dear as the bonds he made with his old crew.

Maegan was far too busy to socialise much with him or the rest of his friends. She'd made a name for herself by now with her unique perspective and head-strong leadership style, and being part of the Intergalactic Crisis Prevention Council, she really couldn't make time to catch up with old friends.

Deedee had made a name for herself in a different way. What originally started as an addictive search for coffee became a legendary constant hunt for ancient treasures in every planet she could land on. Emmet chuckled to himself, remembering a couple of awful songs about the 'Star Raider Deedee' that he heard at some point. He and Deedee did catch up from time to time, but she was usually so far away from him that she wouldn't be able to visit him often.

Tom, after his failed attempt at ceasing his compulsive lying, became a bounty hunter. With Emmet's help, Tom ended up chasing a dream he had, even if it was only because he thought it was badass. He didn't become extremely famous like he always wanted to, but Emmet knew that Tom was still content with the life he helped Tom choose. Tom shot Emmet a message every now and then, but he was too enveloped in his line of work to chat with his old buddy too often.

Despite Baby becoming nothing short of an intergalactic superhero, he was the person Emmet could talk to the most. But, even then, it wasn't usually in person. They often exchanged messages in between Baby's rescue missions, either making small talk or talking about their recent accomplishments or the newest exotic food they've tried, though it never could satiate Emmet's loneliness as much as he wanted it to.

April... _Ah. So that's who that alien reminded me of._ If it wasn't her temper that she was famous for, it was her ability to take what most people would see as a hunk of junk and tinker it into a work of art. She knew her way around machinery like it was the back of her hand. But, one day, she left Emmet to go back to some 'kickass alien spaceship' she saw and tinker it into oblivion. Some people say that she managed to fix it and flew far into the corners of the universe, creating her own personal adventures. Other people presumed her to be dead because she never made contact with anyone else ever again after she entered that wreck.

Emmet was one of the people who believed that she was dead.

He let out a long, drawn out sigh, resting his head on a propped-up arm. He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss her. At least with the others, he knew that they were okay. At first, he held onto the hope that April would make contact with him or the others one day, but five years of zero contact or remote evidence that April had been around wavered that hope significantly.

"Hey."

Emmet jolted up and looked up at the humanoid figure in front of him. The spikes lining the shoulders of their zipped-up leather jacket caught his eye first, though he supposed he couldn't help it, given how much they shone under the ceiling lights. His eyes then trailed over to their mask, strapped around the hood they were wearing. He pulled his goggles up over his forehead and glanced around the bar, only just now realising how much time had passed while he was lost in his thoughts. The chatter was significantly more hushed than before. He looked back into the figure's dark eyeglasses. "Uh-" He cleared his throat. "May I help you?" The fact that they were wearing a full-face mask and not showing even an inch of skin made him nervous, but he wasn't the type to be rude to someone just because they looked like they were going to pull out a gun and fire a laser square into his head.

The figure shook their head and sat down in the stool across from him. "You just look a little down. You up for a game of cards? I heard you're good at it."

_Of course they did._ He only just remembered that, as a regular, he was well-known for keeping extremely long streaks. In his honesty, he planned for his previous game to be the last one he had for the day, but he figured that one more game couldn't hurt. He almost always won, anyway. "Alright, sure." Emmet slipped his box of cards out of his bag. "What are you betting?"

"A drink."

"...What?"

"Loser buys a drink for the other."

Emmet sat there for a moment. It's been a while since somebody gambled so little with him. The people who usually played against him now were people who wanted to end his streak and leak him of most of the money he'd accumulated over the years. "...Alright then." He pulled out his stack of cards and began shuffling them. There was something bugging him about this alien at the back of his mind, though, he decided it was probably just the fact that they look like they would murder him if he looked at them wrong.

\---

He was frozen in his place, dumbfounded. Somehow, this person ended his streak so casually... and all they wanted was a drink. Emmet asked them if they were sure they wanted nothing else afterwards, and they only confirmed that. He was still trying to figure out how they beat him so easily-- was it because he couldn't read their face, but they could read his? Did he just have an extraordinarily bad hand and he somehow didn't realise he did? The possibilities and scenarios he came up with were endless, but his thoughts were interrupted by his opponent knocking on the table.

"Hey, you still haven't gotten me that drink," they mentioned. Emmet could almost imagine them cocking their eyebrow at him.

"...Right. Sorry about that." He stood up from the table and walked over to the bartender to fetch what the other asked for.

Emmet returned to their table with a shot glass and a bottle of plain old whiskey. He placed them in front of the stranger, then rested his hands on the table. "Uh... congratulations. You broke my streak." They responded with a shrug.

"You don't want any?" they asked. Emmet shook his head.

"I have had enough today. I don't really like drinking too much." They responded with another shrug and continued to sit there, not touching the glass or the bottle. _Figures. It's not like they can drink with that mask on, or anything._ The two sat in silence for a few moments.

"So," they started, leaning on the table with their left arm. Emmet's eyes were immediately drawn to how strangely their sleeve folded against the table. He took a mental note of it, but he decided not to bring it up. Not yet, at least. "I didn't think you'd be caught up in gambling, let alone be _well-known_ for gambling."

Emmet furrowed his brow, both out of confusion and out of mild concern out of the fact that they were talking to him as if they were buddy-buddy at some point. "What... do you mean?" He reassured himself that there was no possible way that he had some stalker that knew him before he became well-known for gambling. Though, he just wanted to make sure, just in case.

"Gambling was never your thing. Something about it being against your morals, right?" they clarified. His heart rate started to rise. _Oh God, it IS a stalker._ He sat up straighter in his stool and awkwardly cleared his throat. Emmet had no clue what this person wanted, and he was trying to find a way out without provoking them, though the pressure he was placing on himself was causing him to draw up a blank. He swallowed hard, hoping that if he just beared through this, they would go away and he could fly far, far away.

"Uh- uhm..." Emmet ran his hand through his hair. "It is... still against my morals, really. I just... ended up getting caught up in it anyway. Somehow." He dreaded the nervousness that he knew was showing in his voice. _Just bear through it._ The dread peaked when he heard the other start laughing, but as soon as the dread peaked, he felt something else. He couldn't place his finger on it. _That laugh._ It very vaguely reminded him of something. Now, if he could only make his blurry thoughts more clear...

"Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh," they said. Emmet felt like he was being mocked, and it didn't help that he could hear their smile under that mask. They observed Emmet, their piercing eyeglasses threatening to expose his every weakness. He feared that they were sizing him up for... something. The other tilted their head. "Hey." They gestured towards Emmet's nervous fidgeting. "You don't need to be so nervous, M."

Emmet froze. "...M?" _Wait..._

They reached behind their head. Emmet heard a few clicks before they tossed the mask onto the table. Her familiar umber hair fell in loose curls in front of her eye. "It's just me, you nerd." Her cheeks raised into a smile, showing off her memorable dimples. "Sorry for scaring you like that-- hey, stop pinching yourself so much!"

He could hardly believe it. Five years. _Five whole years_ of having not seen April, three of which he finally accepted that she might be dead, yet there she was, sitting in front of him and popping open the bottle of whiskey she won from him. Emmet watched her take a swig from the bottle itself as he tried to piece together his thoughts. He felt overjoyed to see her again, glad to know that she's okay. He also felt... frustrated. Angry. She led everyone to believe she was dead for _five years_ , and she was sitting in front of him as if nothing ever happened.

"April... I thought you were _dead_ ," he muttered. "We all did. Maybe not Baby, but that is only because of how optimistic he is." A part of Emmet felt guilty for not celebrating the fact that April's alive, but he needed an explanation. She placed the bottle on the table before scratching her neck.

"Yeah... sorry about that."

"Sorry?!" Emmet stood up from his chair and slammed his hands on his table. "It took me _three years_ to accept that I might never see you again, and all you have to say is _sorry?!_ "

April sat there and stared at him, offering no response. He sighed before sitting back down and pinching his nosebridge. "I am... sorry," he apologised. "I just... I need an explanation for this. Why did you just... fall off the face of the universe for so long?" She blinked a few times, then leaned forward in her seat.

"I needed some time to myself. Attention isn't really my thing." Emmet cocked an eyebrow at her, waiting patiently for her to continue. April grabbed the bottle and took another swig from it. "I know, I know. I... probably should've told you guys before I just disappeared. That's my fault. But, I'm telling you that the reason why I went radio silent was because I didn't like the attention I was getting. Sure, it felt good knowing people thought my skills were, heh, amazing, but I was also known for how pissy I got at everything. After I took some time to myself, I realise that that ain't something I wanted to be known for. So, I went and repaired that spaceship save for the communications console, and I took off.

"I know I'm not the type of person that's super wise or wishy-washy or anything dumb like that, but I wanted to change, even a little bit. The only way I wanted to change was on my own." April leaned her left arm on the table again. "Believe me, I felt _hella_ guilty leaving you all behind like that the entire time. That's... that's why I came back. I got word of a regular here at one of the most popular intergalactic bars that matched your description."

Emmet's expression softened up a little bit. Knowing her reasons for disappearing like that now, he couldn't be too angry at her. He was still frustrated, but that was something he'd sort out on his own. "Wait, so... the others don't know you're alive yet?" April shook her head.

"I have no clue where the others are, and you're the first person I could get an exact location of, so..." He quickly grasped his hands and lifted them to his chest.

"We need to tell them, then! I will go and send Baby a--"

" _Jesus_ , slow down! Wait a second." Emmet stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows at April. "Listen, I'm sure they'd be pretty damn excited to see me, but... I just wanted to catch up with you first and relax. I'm pretty exhausted."

"Oh." Emmet cleared his throat. "Right. We can take all the time we need together." April let out a breath of relief. "Speaking of catching up..."

"Hm?"

He gestured towards April's left arm. "Your... arm. What is up with that?"

"Oh, right. I almost forgot about that." She lifted her arm up and gazed at it for a few seconds. "Must've noticed the folds, huh?" He nodded his head. April grinned and yanked her glove off, revealing a metal skeleton lined with coloured wires. The sight almost made Emmet's jaw drop to the floor.

"What the hell happened to your hand?!" he exclaimed, clearly extraordinarily worried about her. April responded with a laugh.

"I got into an accident involving the kickass spaceship, and I kiiinda had to make a new arm for myself since it was my dominant one. Kinda cool, huh?" April twisted her prosthetic hand around, wiggling her fingers. "Well, I guess _now_ I see why it was so believable that I died, huh?" She grinned at Emmet, but her expression quickly changed into a pout when she saw the frown on his face. "Oh come ooon, lighten up a little!"

Emmet rubbed his temples, then offered a small smile. Despite how long it's been and how much of April's anger was apparently subdued, he felt solace in the fact that the April he knew and loved still remained. "Alright, alright. I am still a little mad at you, though." He stood up from the table. "We should catch up somewhere else. It's getting a little late."

April nodded, then stood up after Emmet. "Yeah, that sounds cool. You got a ship I could hang out in?"

"Mhm."

"Kickass."

\---

Today was far too exciting, usually to Emmet's dismay, though, he couldn't say that he wasn't glad that what happened _happened_. For once in a long while, he didn't feel so alone as he and an old friend talked about all the things they've discovered and accomplished as they made way to Emmet's ship. He hoped that this would be the start of a great reunion of the Astro-Citizen crew, even if the reunion may or may not be short-lived. For now, he thought about finally leaving that bar for good, leaving his years of lonely gambling behind, and instead creating new, exciting adventures with April-- for old times' sake.


End file.
